Khan sister act puts Seattle in spotlight for squash

KRISTIN DIZO, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

By KRISTIN DIZON, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, January 22, 2003

Latasha Khan, left, is the current national squash champion and has held the title three times. Older sister Shabana won the national title in 2001, beating Latasha in the final.
Photo: Phil H. Webber/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Latasha Khan, left, is the current national squash champion and has...

They may be sisters, but neither the No. 1 nor the No. 2 ranked female squash players in the United States gives any quarter as they trade points. Both women move like cats, slinking into tight corners for a return. It isn't until they pause that you see their shoulders and chests heaving for air.

A middle-age man watching them play murmurs a compliment. "Jesus, they're brutal. Just brutal."

In the end, they split two games apiece. But this is just practice for the women, members of a Pakistani-Indian squash family.

Two years ago, the sisters played each other in the finals of the national championships, held in Seattle in 2001. Defying the expectations of the squash world, Shabana Khan beat younger, more powerful sister Latasha in the finals before a hometown crowd.

"It was bittersweet," Shabana says. "It was like, if she feels miserable, how can I celebrate?"

In their private matchups, Shabana, 34, has often dominated. But Latasha, 30, is the current national champion, has held the title three times and wins more matches against other players.

Before the Khan sisters, top American squash players largely came from or trained on the East Coast. The two, who make up half of the U.S. women's team, had to constantly explain that Seattle was on the opposite American coast.

"They're the first two Americans in a long time that have made any headway in the world on the tour," said Jay Prince, publisher of Squash Magazine, headquartered in Seattle.

In the past year alone, the women have traveled to Switzerland, Holland, Qatar, Ecuador, Hong Kong and more countries for tournaments.

They often fly together, bunk together and warm each other up for matches. They cheer for and coach each other, but they also know when to back off.

And they have very different styles.

Latasha says she's more of a loner who has always enjoyed research and time spent in libraries. She plays more of a power game, whipping the little black rubber ball around the court with a loud snap. She has skin the color of cafe au lait and eyes that hover between dark blue and hazel.

Shabana, who is married and trains five or six days a week, is darker, petite and more outgoing. At 5-feet-2, she's often at a reach disadvantage, but she maximizes her skills with a game of precision placement.

Not being among the world's top five or 10 players means that the sisters usually pay to play the sport.

"It's out of pocket," says Shabana, who juggles the globe-trotting life of a pro player with full-time work as the assistant teaching pro at the downtown Seattle Athletic Club. "I basically lose money every time I go to a tournament."

While both sisters get free rackets from companies and Latasha has a U.S. Olympic Committee travel grant, there are times when they find themselves abroad and between tournaments, wondering where they'll sleep for the next week.

Usually, they take home about $500 for playing in the first round but rarely make it further at first-rate international tournaments. The United States, which finished 15th in the last women's world team championships, isn't a powerhouse on the global circuit, which is dominated by Commonwealth countries such as Australia and England.

But the name "Khan" is to squash what Kennedy is to politics or Rockefeller is to business. Family patriarch Yusuf was a 10-time national champion in India who trained other champions and has spent the past 35 years raising the level of the sport in Seattle.

The family also is distantly related to Jahangir Khan and Jansher Khan, some of the best players to ever swing a squash racket.

With such a history, one might think Yusuf would have put his eight kids on a squash court while they were still in diapers and nurtured trophy dreams.

He did no such thing. He emphasized education and let the children decide whether they wanted to play. Four of the eight children developed elite-level games.

"I tell people it's like teaching swimming," says Yusuf, who came to Seattle in 1968 as a pro at the Seattle Tennis Club. "If you put them in the ocean, either they go far or they don't. It's their responsibility."

Shabana took up the sport seriously when she was 13, when her father leased a squash club. She loved sipping lemonade and chatting with him after playing. "That was the coolest part," she said. "I didn't care about the squash."

But the sport was natural for her and just a year later, Shabana became the junior national champion.

"My dad was shocked. He was just sending us for experience," Shabana recalls. "He didn't expect me to win, but then I won the next four years."

Younger sister Latasha started playing when she was about 8, pleased that she could hit against a wall alone and entertain herself. "I didn't think I'd play competitively. I just enjoyed it," she says.

Within six months, she was regularly beating adult men. Then she became the national junior champion four times.

Latasha was mum about her athletic accomplishments. "No one at school ever knew I played squash," said Latasha. "I didn't tell anybody."

The championships were always held on the East Coast, where the Khans became a West Coast menace.

"Back East they said, 'Who are these girls? Where are they coming from?' " recounts older brother Azam, who was on the U.S. men's team eight times before an arthritic hip derailed his career as a top player. "The parents and the coaches would get all upset, and say, 'Why can't we beat those two girls?' "

One reason they were hard to beat is that the Khan sisters were focused. They were too busy playing squash to party or carouse with boys.

"We didn't get to hang around and go to parties," says Shabana. "And that was fine. I thought I was lucky to grow up the way that I did."

The Muslim family was always tightknit, though Shabana and four siblings share a different mother than Latasha and two siblings. Yusuf's ex-wife, who moved here from India, and his current wife, who is a Seattle native, get along well, and the entire family lives within a two-mile radius of each other in West Seattle.

"We don't believe in the 'half' stuff," Shabana says. "You're either a sister or a brother or you're not."

One thing they all inherited is a competitive spirit.

"We've played family baseball and gotten into fights over the rules," Latasha said. "We used to play football, but that got rough. It was supposed to be touch, but it ended up being tackle."

Shabana Khan turned down admission to squash bastions like Harvard, Princeton and Yale in order to be close to home and train with her father, even though UW didn't, and still doesn't, have a squash team.

Following their father's lead, the women chose to play the international game -- or softball squash -- at a time when Americans preferred the faster hardball game with its narrower court. The United States adopted the international version in 1993.

The Khan family continues to make its mark on the sport in Seattle, where they've helped the sport grow and brought major tournaments to the city. Three of the siblings and their semi-retired father make up a majority of the area's squash pros.

Shabana teaches with her oldest brother, Ayub, head pro at the Seattle Athletic Club, which has about 600 squash players. Her coach is Azam, who's been the pro for 11 years at Bellevue's Pro Sports Club, which also has about 600 players and just built nine squash courts.

The sisters, who joined the professional tour in 1996 and have been ranked No. 1 and 2 in the United States for the past four years, are so good that they can't find any other women to practice with in Seattle.

"If I was by myself, I probably wouldn't have done it," says Latasha, who doesn't enjoy traveling. "I probably would have given up easier."

Shabana, who gives 30 to 40 lessons a week, wants to break into the top 20 by the end of the month. Latasha hopes to be 15 or higher by the end of the year.

But both women are facing the possible twilight of their pro squash careers. They decide each year whether to keep playing.

In March, when the U.S. championships are held, the Khans could end up in a sister vs. sister rematch.

And that's just fine with them.

"We'd like to -- because we know that if either one of us wins, that's good," said Shabana. "It's better for us to beat each other, because we're family. I'd rather lose to a sibling than someone else."